[Loughla]

And yet, if you make it like I do, there always manages to be one piece that is ice cold while the rest is shockingly hot. Even if you're start with warm ingredients.

Physics does not apply to lasagna.

Also I suck at making lasagna.

[LoganDark]

I don't know how you cook your lasagna, but cooking for longer at a lower temperature usually results in more even heating than cooking for less long at a higher temperature. (This is one of the reasons microwaves are so terrible at heating evenly.) If you're not already, that may help.

(I also imagine using the circulation in a convection oven might help as well. Also, preheating your oven! Even if it's a toaster oven.)

[esseph]

Microwave tip:

Use the power button to select a lower power level, and cook the food for longer.

[dataflow]

Only works adequately if your microwave is the rarer kind that actually lowers the power (inverter), instead of just switching between 100% and 0% repeatedly.

[vel0city]

I don't have the fancier inverter style. Setting a power level still works pretty well even though flawed. Drawing out the overall cooking time still manages to get things more evenly heated in the end when you give the food time to distribute the heat throughout the food.

Cooking food for 2 minutes at 50% power gives a noticeable difference in average temperature compared to cooking food for 1 minute at 100% power and waiting a minute.

And I don't always know what it decides to do as far as turning the magnetron on and off on its sensor modes, but it'll spend a while doing automated reheat and potatoes and what not and it'll be dang near perfect every time.

Don't get me wrong I'd love an inverter microwave, truly a better option. But its not like the duty cycle process has no impact.

[chongli]

It's funny, because the inverter microwave is actually cheaper to build nowadays. It uses a small switching power supply to generate the needed voltage to run the magnetron at different power levels. The older style duty cycle microwaves use a huge transformer to generate the high voltage, which makes them way heavier and more expensive due to all that copper.

[vel0city]

My microwave is over 20 years old and still working fine even with its computerized automatic modes. Modern versions of the product line are inverter based. Whenever this unit fails I'll probably replace it with the modern inverter version. I've used it at friends places, it's quite nice.

It's a GE Profile model FWIW. It seems like a good product line from my experiences. The matching oven has also been a good performer overall.

[afiori]

This should depend on the frequency of the switching, if it is every few seconds it should behave sorta the same

[wolrah]

Another important part is that a lot of microwave recipes specifically state to leave the food in the microwave for a period of time after it's done cooking, and often stir it after that. Almost no one actually does that.

Most people think they should be able to put food in, nuke it at full power for as short of a time as possible, and then immediately shove it in their face with no consequence and we all know that doesn't work yet most of us will keep doing it anyways.

[dataflow]

Yes but I've never seen it be every few seconds. Every time I've seen, it's quite prolonged.

[goopypoop]

toroidal lasagne microwaves better

[stavros]

Spotted the Brit.

[goopypoop]

u wot m8

[account42]

Preheating isn't really important for most things, essentially anything that doesn't specifically call for very high temperatures. The main thing it gets you is more predictable baking times which is important if you need a number to print on a box that will work in most ovens but less so when you just leave something in the oven until it is done.